Chapter III
Elendil was walking in his garden, but not to look upon its beauty in the evening light. He was troubled and his mind was turned inward. His house with its white tower and golden roof glowed behind him in the sunset, but his eyes were on the path before his feet. He was going down to the shore, to bathe in the blue pools of the cove beyond his garden’s end, as was his custom at this hour. And he looked also to find his son Herendil there. The time had come when he must speak to him.
He came at length to the great hedge of lavaralda1 that fenced the garden at its lower, western, end. It was a familiar sight, though the years could not dim its beauty. It was seven twelves of years2 or more since he had planted it himself when planning his garden before his marriage; and he had blessed his good fortune. For the seeds had come from Eressëa far westward, whence ships came seldom already in those days, and now they came no more. But the spirit of that blessed land and its fair people remained still in the trees that had grown from those seeds: their long green leaves were golden on the undersides, and as a breeze off the water stirred them they whispered with a sound of many soft voices, and glistened like sunbeams on rippling waves. The flowers were pale with a yellow flush, and laid thickly on the branches like a sunlit snow; and their odour filled all the lower garden, faint but clear. Mariners in the old days said that the scent of lavaralda could be felt on the air long ere the land of Eressëa could be seen, and that it brought a desire of rest and great content. He had seen the trees in flower day after day, for they rested from flowering only at rare intervals. But now, suddenly, as he passed, the scent struck him with a keen fragrance, at once known and utterly strange. He seemed for a moment never to have smelled it before: it pierced the troubles of his mind, bewildering, bringing no familiar content, but a new disquiet.
‘Eressëa, Eressëa!’ he said. ‘I wish I were there; and had not been fated to dwell in Númenor3 half-way between the worlds. And least of all in these days of perplexity!’
He passed under an arch of shining leaves, and walked swiftly down rock-hewn steps to the white beach. Elendil looked about him, but he could not see his son. A picture rose in his mind of Herendil’s white body, strong and beautiful upon the threshold of early manhood, cleaving the water, or lying on the sand glistening in the sun. But Herendil was not there, and the beach seemed oddly empty.
Elendil stood and surveyed the cove and its rocky walls once more; and as he looked, his eyes rose by chance to his own house among trees and flowers upon the slopes above the shore, white and golden, shining in the sunset. And he stopped and gazed: for suddenly the house stood there, as a thing at once real and visionary, as a thing in some other time and story, beautiful, beloved, but strange, awaking desire as if it were part of a mystery that was still hidden. He could not interpret the feeling.
He sighed. ‘I suppose it is the threat of war that maketh me look upon fair things with such disquiet,’ he thought. ‘The shadow of fear is between us and the sun, and all things look as if they were already lost. Yet they are strangely beautiful thus seen. I do not know. I wonder. A Númenórë! I hope the trees will blossom on your hills in years to come as they do now; and your towers will stand white in the Moon and yellow in the Sun. I wish it were not hope, but assurance – that assurance we used to have before the Shadow. But where is Herendil? I must see him and speak to him, more clearly than we have spoken yet. Ere it is too late. The time is getting short.’
‘Herendil!’ he called, and his voice echoed along the hollow shore above the soft sound of the light-falling waves. ‘Herendil!’
And even as he called, he seemed to hear his own voice, and to mark that it was strong and curiously melodious. ‘Herendil!’ he called again.
At length there was an answering call: a young voice very clear came from some distance away – like a bell out of a deep cave.
‘Man-ie, atto, man-ie?’
For a brief moment it seemed to Elendil that the words were strange. ‘Man-ie, atto? What is it, father?’ Then the feeling passed.
‘Where art thou?’
‘Here!’
‘I cannot see thee.’
‘I am upon the wall, looking down on thee.’
Elendil looked up; and then swiftly climbed another flight of stone steps at the northern end of the cove. He came out upon a flat space smoothed and levelled on the top of the projecting spur of rock. Here there was room to lie in the sun, or sit upon a wide stone seat with its back against the cliff, down the face of which there fell a cascade of trailing stems rich with garlands of blue and silver flowers. Flat upon the stone with his chin in his hands lay a youth. He was looking out to sea, and did not turn his head as his father came up and sat down on the seat.
‘Of what art thou dreaming, Herendil, that thy ears hear not?’
‘I am thinking; I am not dreaming. I am a child no longer.’
‘I know thou art not,’ said Elendil; ‘and for that reason I wished to find thee and speak with thee. Thou art so often out and away, and so seldom at home these days.’
He looked down on the white body before him. It was dear to him, and beautiful. Herendil was naked, for he had been diving from the high point, being a daring diver and proud of his skill. It seemed suddenly to Elendil that the lad had grown over night, almost out of knowledge.
‘How thou dost grow!’ he said. ‘Thou hast the makings of a mighty man, and have nearly finished the making.’
‘Why dost thou mock me?’ said the boy. ‘Thou knowest I am dark, and smaller than most others of my year. And that is a trouble to me. I stand barely to the shoulder of Almáriel, whose hair is of shining gold, and she is a maiden, and of my own age. We hold that we are of the blood of kings, but I tell thee thy friends’ sons make a jest of me and call me Terendul4 – slender and dark; and they say I have Eressëan blood, or that I am half-Noldo. And that is not said with love in these days. It is but a step from being called half a Gnome to being called Godfearing; and that is dangerous.’5
Elendil sighed. ‘Then it must have become perilous to be the son of him that is named elendil; for that leads to Valandil, God-friend, who was thy father’s father.’6
There was a silence. At length Herendil spoke again: ‘Of whom dost thou say that our king, Tarkalion, is descended?’
‘From Eärendel the mariner, son of Tuor the mighty who was lost in these seas.’7
‘Why then may not the king do as Eärendel from whom he is come? They say that he should follow him, and complete his work.’
‘What dost thou think that they mean? Whither should he go, and fulfil what work?’
‘Thou knowest. Did not Eärendel voyage to the uttermost West, and set foot in that land that is forbidden to us? He doth not die, or so songs say.’
‘What callest thou Death? He did not return. He forsook all whom he loved, ere he stepped on that shore.8 He saved his kindred by losing them.’
‘Were the Gods wroth with him?’
‘Who knoweth? For he came not back. But he did not dare that deed to serve Melko, but to defeat him; to free men from Melko, not from the Lords; to win us the earth, not the land of the Lords. And the Lords heard his prayer and arose against Melko. And the earth is ours.’